Quiros' vision, His hidalgo heart and Mythical Australia

From Peter Enns - my quote of the day (HT Ken Schenck)

We are in no position to declare what genres of literature the Spirit can or can’t use, and our theological comfort level is not a determining factor in how God elects to speak.

(Title from Terra Australis, words below by James McAuley - as set by Malcolm Williamson - Symphony for Voices)

Voyage within you on the fabled ocean
And you will find that southern continent
Quiros' vision, his hidalgo heart and
Mythical Australia where reside all things
In their imagined counterpart

It is your land of similes
The wattle scatters its pollen on the doubting heart
The flowers are wide awake
The air gives ease
There you come home

The magpies call you Jack
And whistle like larikins at you from the trees
There too the angophora preaches on the hillsides
With the gestures of Moses and the white cockatoo
Perch'd on his limbs screams with demoniac pain

And who shall say on what errand the insolent emu
Walks between morning and night on the edge of the plain?
But northward in the valley of the fiery goat,
Where the sun like a centaur vertically shoots his raging arrows with unerring aim,
Stand th’ecstatic solitary pyres of unknown lovers featureless with flame.

Wright, Piper, and reviews by Ken Schenck

Ken Schenck has a number of interesting reviews at least for me on NT Wright and Piper and others. I am glad for the reviews because I am not inclined to read the authors though I might be tempted more by Wright since I read some of the to me loud-sounding Piper the other day. I have read some Dunn years ago before I started working through the psalms. I always liked his writing simply because he reframes Paul with what seems better accuracy than what I grew up with. But like any picture frame, I might occasionally like to look through another one.

I like some of Ken's personal conclusions:

I personally think it is beyond question that a lot of the questions we most debate over in conservative Protestant circles are not the issues Jews of the day were. The New Testament is not about how to get to heaven. It isn't even clear about whether heaven is the place of our eternal destiny.

This is so important and so obvious if you read the NT. The phrase 'getting to heaven' is not what life is about. I cannot find that phrase anywhere. If we are 'in Christ' we are already there, (whatever that means).

I had not read Daniel for ages - Daniel 9 particularly has such deep overtones of Deuteronomy and the Psalms - that I must eventually get to reading it in Hebrew rather than my superficial scan in English. Of course I am going nowhere near the ridiculous abuse of Daniel by late unmentionable 20th century authors.

My own summary of the impact of reading the OT is here jotted down last night from a couple of rare words in Psalm 12. It's my last sentence that expresses for me the now and not yet that is implied in the beloved Daniel. What end are we waiting for or are we coming to? My answer in Christ is

to the death that is in his cross - a unique destruction for the wicked and the hope of all. For whatever is conformed to his death awakens to new life now and in the age to come.

It is not that Paul or any other NT author has 'return from exile' as a lens - but that they have multiple lenses and any pair of glasses you might like is there for the constructing from Biblical texts if you care to mold your frame and polish the lens to your particular corneal shape. It is that in Christ, the end to which we are called is already present. As the Old Testament witness implies, we too, like them can now apprehend it by faith. We have more information, but the impact is the same and even the information that we have can be seen in the mystery of God's choice of Abraham, Moses, Israel, David and the later prophets and poets of that remarkable history.

Globe and Mail - the Vanier letters

This letter today is well worth reading - be it so now and in the age to come.

Globe and Mail writer Ian Brown continues his correspondence with Jean Vanier, the Canadian-born founder of L'Arche, a global set of communities for the disabled.

Faith

Faith - why would anyone want a 'definition'? What could a little five letter squiggle of text on a screen mean?

This morning's sermon was of the type: you just believe this theological proposition about the second person of the Trinity and you'll be fine. How he got this from 2 Corinthians 4:4-6 is beyond me. Paul preaching Trinity? But who cares about the words? I care. I like rhythm and pulse and feel and sound. But it is not trinity that I fell in love with. So I care about accuracy and passion and people who don't mess with the menu so you know what it is you are ordering.

These sermons don't work for me. Not now, not 50 years ago and not 500 years ago. I dare say not even 1500 years ago when I could have lost my life for saying a word with a missing letter. It is possible to care about theology and miss the train. Some say there is no train. The life we have is a wisp of smoke in an infinite and hostile place. So relax and enjoy yourself. Yes - but who authors effective enjoyment?

I should not be too critical of the sermon because he had a number of good pieces of advice on prayer - long short or otherwise. But he missed the reason and it is in the text he was looking at - a fundamental - the good of light. People tell me that light as a metaphor is obsolete. They have been in the dark too long.

Words won't do. People just use them to argue.

Again on faith - and the ever present abuse of words in this article by John Piper. Here it is clearly written:

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying.

So I will not quote any of it. But I do not recommend it anyway. It comes recommended by all sorts of people I do not trust. Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are all these others?

You know already the strident tone of "I've got it right and you haven't" or the appeal to all those who "just don't understand what it means to be born again." (I am not quoting - that would be to disobey the copyright order.)

I do not put my faith in this sort of understanding of Scripture - a strident concatenation of verses yanked from their context and placed into the frame of the mega-church. Knowing all these verses is not 'going on your way rejoicing'. (Learn them by all means but not by reading evangelical twaddle.)

So much for my "very conservative" rating. I am not conservative. I am not "very". I am not "confessional". I am a radish, a large, red, sweet root.

In my small corner

These are some of the posts I have noted with a star this past few weeks. No one has helped me with Psalm 139, tsk tsk. It could lead off a great discussion, going farther than the comments on what Daniel and Tonya call one of John's favorite posts and getting beyond the eschatology that lacks e and h which I have cut off from my aggregator, in the name of the Lord I will 'cut them off'. Let the reader beware. This intimate knowledge is not strange to Judaism either, as Rachel notes, and may indeed be one of those aspects of holiness, anointing, and love of Torah that escapes the mind of the narrow confessional approaches to being right which as noted by Ken Schenck, tend to be divisive rather than healing.

On the subject of healing, the leaves of the tree of life fit well with Rachel's post noted above, and might provide better governance of evil dictators than we have seen since the first Iraq war in 1990 on which there has been a spate of comments here (link and post removed). I am disappointed in the ad hominem tone of the comments. Tutu is right to point out the consequence of American actions. There is no choice but repentance - and the reality of repentance is action not words.

On a more positive note, John points us to the Bach Bible - and indeed Bach is known, relics aside, as the fifth evangelist. And Bach to the Bible aside, David reminds us twice as noted by Tim and Henry and John that commas, cantillation, headings, and structural summaries are not canonical and can be positively misleading. This has been my argument for leaving out what the words do not say that the Spirit may create in us the action that is non-action. Not by might in the strength of your tanks and gas pedals, nor by power in the cleverness of your abstractions, but by the Spirit in that knowledge of us that cannot be faced without the face of יְהוָה and our death in his death. Then we will learn something more of the abnormally interesting true temple. And at the risk of sounding my own horn, do read Psalm 80. And consider the lilies!

On the issue of understanding, Sue's even-handedness on Ephesians 5:22 is noted here. As an egalitarian and inclusivist, I wonder if the fearful rule of tyrants is somewhat related to the failure of the Church to note its own prejudices. Not to be solved by violence...

There are many posts I starred with the hope of returning to them some day - just not enough time - so lectures on Hebrews, Pagan Christianity (Ken is reading it for us, for which I am thankful), and theological exegesis.

And this emphasis on statistics, John, - Jim is right to pooh-pooh them, but don't read his post. Who counts the reads on an aggregator when you don't have to go to the site to read the post? And who counts the pages when they are on a site that is not counted? Who loves statistics deserves the plague (pick your favorite) - and its cure - to fall into the hand of יְהוָה - no better place to be.

Learning Hebrew in old times

Here's a fascinating post on how the Rabbis learned Hebrew.

New novelist

Ken Schenck is writing a novel on Paul (here is an excerpt). Other scholars have tried on Paul and on Jesus. Why does one do it I wonder?

Never have I approached his subject (sex) from the angle he chose. But under the surface, the subject pervades my writing, story or blogs. (Click label 'story' at the left for some of my excerpts.) It pervades because of the realities of 'the facts of new life'. Ken has expressed both sides of the usual arguments - but is there a razor's edge that falls in neither camp but steers between both? I think there is and that it lies in the incomplete note by Paul in these early letters - 1 Corinthians 6:13 and 7:7 for examples. The knowledge that Paul has would have come to him according to the OT and its anointing message - confirming his revised understanding of Jesus. Colossians 2:11 is also relevant in its affirmation of circumcision as applied to the cross and thence to new birth and new life.

One has to ask why God chose circumcision of the male for the sign of the covenant with Abraham.